


A Leash Around Your Heart

by codenamecynic



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Fantasizing, Insomnia, Loneliness, M/M, Masturbation, Other, Past Relationship(s), Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2019-06-29 05:13:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15722688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/codenamecynic/pseuds/codenamecynic
Summary: Harper should be relieved that they're finally out of the Underdark and safely back in Waterdeep, but another sleepless night leaves him reliving old memories - bad decisions, almost-mistakes, and a pair of ocean eyes that just won't leave him alone.





	A Leash Around Your Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [onemooncircles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/onemooncircles/gifts), [bettydice (BettyKnight)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BettyKnight/gifts), [Fionavar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fionavar/gifts), [Dakoyone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dakoyone/gifts).



Waterdeep hasn’t changed a bit.

The Golden Sail is too far away from the harbor to hear the sound of water buffeting up against the pylons, but he can see the slender silhouettes of ship masts and yardarms against lights burning on the pier. Usually he finds that calming, the slow undulation of ships on the sea, up and down as the water billows, slow like the rise and fall of a great chest.

He could use calming. Hells, at this point he’d compromise and take  _ boring _ , but all he really has is this crushing sense of anxiousness, inaction coiling in him like a spring, tighter and tighter until the metal shears apart and shrapnel goes flying everywhere.

Harper doesn’t sleep well, hasn’t for years. He’s had hours of practice lying still as a corpse, trying to persuade himself, deceive himself, harrange himself, into unconsciousness. Bargaining, just for an hour. Just for a minute. All he usually manages is dry eyes and a slight headache from glaring at the ceiling, and tonight is more of the same.

The place has been quiet for hours. He’s finally in a room by himself after ages and ages of waking up with Katy’s hand in his face and her knee in his balls and her drool on his chest, even after she had her own fucking bed in dead Lambert’s house, and he thought he might actually manage a full night of sleep on his own, only -

Well. Here he is, wide awake and hating himself for being such a resentful dickhead.

He sighs irritably, mashes the heels of his palms into his eyes, smears his hands down his face. It’s warm upstairs in the inn but there’s a breeze ruffling the thin curtains at the window that slides right across his little rented bed. It feels good against his freshly shaven face, slipping against his scalp like long cool fingers, and he lifts himself up just enough to pull his shirt over his head and off, tossing it in the floor with the rest of his gear.

He hasn’t even bothered to unpack, that’s how certain he is that they’re not staying. Khem has one day more at the library and then he doesn’t know, but they never seem to linger. He misses the early days in the city when they did, traipsing about the place looking for work, drinking Bren’s ale downstairs. Somehow it felt more honest, which is ironic because Garrod Drake was a complete fabrication, just a dark elf with a sharp smile promenading around in a human suit.

It sounds even more fucked up when he thinks of it that way.

_ Fuck. Fucking fuck _ , he curses and sits up, swinging his legs off the bed, bare feet on the wooden floor. He rests his elbows on his knees, puts his head in his hands. He doesn’t really want to think of Jarnath right now, that is - entirely too complicated, and none of their business with the drow is really up to him anyway. What he really wants is a drink, but Bren has probably gone to bed and he doesn’t want to drag Bill out of whatever hiding place behind the bar the boy has elected to pass out in.

Grousing needlessly at the tired crick in his neck, the weary ache of the muscles in his back, he reaches for his bag and pulls it into his lap.  _ Rum _ , he thinks, and the bag spits out an empty bottle. Shit.  _ Whiskey _ , he tries again, and another bottle falls out, sloshing faintly with less than an inch of liquor in the bottom. He holds it up to the faint light and shakes his head, tosses it down on the bed.  _ Wine  _ comes up with nothing, and when he wrinkles his nose and illogically tries out  _ Beer _ , it spits out a dirty smelling mug that clearly he hasn’t had a chance to wash.

Well, clearly fuck  _ this  _ idea.

He still drinks what’s left of the whiskey though, and represses the sudden urge to throw all of the empty glass on the floor with his boots, certain he’ll regret that in the morning.

Savoring the burn of the last notes of liquor in his mouth, he flings himself back down on his bed. And lies there.

He still doesn’t particularly want to think of Jarnath, but almost without meaning to his mind travels back to the last time he felt this way, restless and fractious and on the edge of upsetable, wanting to either lash out or be struck down himself. Neither of those things happened and he just had sex with Jarnath in another ruin instead, because that’s what he does now apparently. Ruin fucking. 

It’s an embarrassment, really; entirely impolite and, if he’s honest, a bit beneath him. But the sex is still good - was good - whatever - and remembering how his lip had ached for three days afterwards where Jarnath had split it with his teeth makes his cock stir in the loose confines of his pants. Why that one particular detail instead of any of the realistically more tawdry things that happened afterward he doesn’t know, but his dick is hard and that at least is something in the midst of all this desperate  _ nothingness _ .

He pulls the drawstring of his breeches loose and arches his hips up off the bed, pulling them down just enough that his cock springs free in all its dubious glory. It seems to know what it wants at least, even if he never does, and almost against his better judgement he curls his fingers around it, offers up an experimental stroke. It pulses in response, swelling in his hand, full and familiar. That thought makes him sigh, some joke there at his own expense that he doesn’t need to fully articulate, willing himself to relax, to lie back and just let it happen, find a way to finagle some enjoyment out of the clusterfuck of shitty thoughts and old regrets that this night has become.

Jarnath is there, right at the forefront of his mind again and he finds himself circling the memory in Philock like a specter drifting just out of frame. He’s pretty, all that ink dark skin and moonlight hair, silver piercings glinting from an impractical number of places. He’s funny too, at least, but possibly quite insane, and Harper is really quite mad himself to have ever pursued that the way he had in the first place. Now it’s just  _ complicated _ .

Not Jarnath then. Someone else. The bartender from the High Tide, maybe - what was his name - Alberich? No, Aldred. He’s nice-looking in a generically nice-looking bartender kind of way, but half-elf only leads him to Katy and that is not a thing he can really think about with his hand on his dick. It makes him wonder how she and Shay are getting on, and he really can’t be  _ worried _ while he’s trying to get his rocks off because it makes him feel like a piece of shit. Even exploring the mountainous half-orc mystery of Jeremy Bonk in his mind doesn’t quite do the trick, because he doesn’t know where his new friends fall on the topic of having sex with the same set of people.

Fuck, fuck, fucking fuck. 

Nala almost does it, because he’s always been sort of attracted to her, right from the very start. The sad eyes, the soft lips, the way her hair falls down around her shoulders, it’s an appropriately illicit fantasy because it’s a bit wrong but also a touch too tempting to be completely off the table. But then he thinks of Donnie and remembers that no matter how much he might want to gather her up and toss her over one shoulder, in the end he’s really just mentally defiling someone’s mother.

_ Good fucking god Ferryman, can’t you even beat your dick without fucking it up? _ He’s suddenly full of wrath and ire, bitter and salty like he’s swallowed a mouthful of seawater. Is he really so broken that he can’t even summon up a single cohesive fantasy for five minutes so he can come and just go the fuck to sleep?

In his head a voice laughs, low and indulgent and almost soothing. It is distinctly  _ not  _ his voice, not a voice he’s heard for many, many years.

It makes him ache, his cock, his chest, down into his very soul. It would figure that his directionless flight would lead him here, his traitor feet always walking that same road back to the place he started, even if only in his mind.

It’s a dangerous path to tread but he’s always been a little bit too reckless for his own good, and now that he’s found himself here again it’s too hard to try and get away, the silver cords of memory bound around his neck and wrists like the love token he used to wear.

The laughter in his mind shivers off the walls and the floor and the sheets beneath him until it all fades away, and he’s in another time, another place, the warmth of sunlight falling over a bed in another room where he’s tangled up with a body he still knows like the tattoos on his arm and the shape of his own scars.

Broad shoulders, sturdy like the earth; back as strong as a ship’s mast, holding up all the important parts of his tiny little world. Arms too, and hands, fingertips callused not so unlike his own, that push him down into the mattress, the silhouette of a man coalescing out of dream mist and his own tired desires, called into being by the sheer weight of Taliesin missing him. Dark hair, long and straight, falling over one shoulder to brush against his chest, lips curved around the shape of a smile. Eyes blue as the sea.

It’s the eyes that do it. _ Cort _ , he thinks, daring himself to whisper the name against the balmy air. It doesn’t quite make it past his lips, a groan instead escaping to blister all the skin off him, winding tight down his spine to settle into the small of his back. It’s like doing magic, like a spell, the shivery tension that holds him fast to the image, taking control of his body until it feels like it’s not even his anymore.

It’s fine. Nothing of him is really his, anyway.

His hand moves over his cock, skin heating beneath his palm with the wanton friction, but he doesn’t stop, not even to fetch the oil. His balls are tight, cock leaking precum from its swollen tip, and he won’t need it soon anyway. He’s already so perilously close, and for what. The memory of those eyes and the dark lashes that frame them, faint lines in the corners driven in by slow smiles that always mean more than words can say.

He almost doesn’t want to come, wants to linger here in this moment, this sunny morning that belongs to another version of himself, even if it means he dies right here and now with his dick in his hand. He’s already too far gone though, and as with everything in his short, sad little life, there is no going back.

He comes, spilling hot across his hand and his stomach, salt on his lips and the smell of cedar and the flowers of a white pear tree wrapped around him like arms that fade in strength almost immediately. He heaves a great panting breath, sucking air into his lungs like he’s been drowning, and it’s over.

Over.

_ Fuck. _

He’s messy, sweating, and he barely manages to clean himself up to an adequate degree before his hands start shaking. He washes them in the basin, threads them through his hair, sits down on the edge of the bed, and helplessly dissolves into pathetic, ruthless tears. He grinds his knuckles into his eyes and they gather hot into the palms of his hands, leaving him feeling hollowed out and empty like an hourglass leaking sand.

It stops as quickly as it started and in a way it’s almost disappointing, that this is all the fruit he has to reap from the bitter seeds he’s planted, row after row in the scarred furrows of his heart. Dry and brittle and thorned like stubborn weeds, he tries to pull them out and they make him bleed.

It’s fine, they can stay. Without them there would just be nothing, and he feels empty enough as it is.

His bag is still at the end of his bed and he reaches for it without thinking, thrusting a hand inside. There isn’t even a word he’s able to summon, just the feeling of a slowly seeping wound, but it still comes when he calls and tangles around his fingers. A single knotted cord in faded black leather, frayed with age and wear, as fragile as he feels.

He lies down with it, curled up on his side with his knees drawn in and hand against his heavy heart, the ghosts of cedar and white pear on his pillow to lure him like a siren’s song finally to sleep.


End file.
